Expert's Rating

Price when reviewed

Best prices today

Nero 2015 Platinum review

Nero 2015 Platinum is a media management and disc burning suite for Windows.

The Nero software package started as Nero Burning ROM, a CD/DVD-burning program, but 2015 Platinum now covers nearly all the media bases, through a multitude of interrelated applications.

These are divided into four main areas on Nero 2015 Platinum's annoyingly non-windowed launcher screen. Nero MediaHome, Nero Media Browser and a Blu-ray player sit under Manage and Play; Nero Video, Nero Recode and Creative Content live under Edit and Convert; Nero Burning ROM and Nero Express sit under Rip and Burn; and Nero BackItUp and Nero Rescue Agent, unsurprisingly, are headlined Backup and Rescue.See also: best backup software.

Nero BackItUp and Creative Content aren’t included on the Nero 2015 Platinum DVD and have to be downloaded separately, like other optional extras, such as Nero WaveEditor.

The backup product is fully automated and can either use the 5 GB of online storage supplied with the suite, or your own local storage. It only handles files only, though, not drive/system backup.

Backing up music and especially videos is almost bound to require more than 5 GB, of course, and £5.49 a month rents unlimited storage.

Nero has always been good at following trends and as CDs and DVDs have given way to other forms of storage, it has steered its way toward media management and streaming. Nero 2015 Platinum continues this move by covering mobile devices and many of the new features are aimed at Android and iOS users.

There are five new applications available: BackItUp, AirBurn, MediaHome Receiver, MediaHome WiFi Sync and Nero Manuals. The last of these displays manuals for the Windows programs on an Android or iOS device, although it would be good to have them on the PC, too - they’re only via your browser.

BackItUp can be used to backup your entire phone or tablet to a memory card, a Windows PC via WiFi or again to that 5 GB of online storage.

Backups can include phone settings and messages, if you select them. AirBurn helps you compile media from your mobile device and burn it to optical disc via Nero Burning ROM, as a one-click task.

MediaHome Receiver links your device to your PC for playing music, slide shows or videos from the library on your PC. MediaHome WiFi Sync syncs selected media between PC and Android device – iOS users still need to use iTunes.

Nero MediaHome can also stream from your PC, via your wireless router to any DNLA device that can latch into the network. This includes smart TVs and media receivers.

The application indexes all your photos, music and videos and enables you to match faces in photos and display your media on a timeline or in other categories. You can add folders for it to watch, although it’s harder to get it to disregard ones it has picked for itself.

The main PC applications in Nero 2015 Platinum generally benefit only from minor tweaks. New facilities such as being able to change disc formats on the fly while authoring a video and the addition of extra, professional-grade fonts improve the Nero Video offering. You can tag photos and videos with name and place info, to help with indexing and selection in Nero MediaHome. (See all software reviews.)

Nero 2015 Platinum: Specs

Windows XP SP3 32-bit/Vista SP2/7 SP1/8/8.1

1 GB RAM

5 GB drive space

2 GHz processor

Windows XP SP3 32-bit/Vista SP2/7 SP1/8/8.1

1 GB RAM

5 GB drive space

2 GHz processor

SHOULD I BUY NERO 2015 PLATINUM?

Nero 2015 Platinum continues to be a good all-round media manager, with an emphasis on disc burning and now on media steaming to fixed and mobile devices around the house. It tries hard to make this as simple to achieve as possible, and often succeeds.

Comments

Bobby Wakeham - 20:10 07-08-2015

I just got an email from Nero. 2015 Classic for just £15-99. Should be £69-99 - 77% discount, but why ? I thought NERO were at the cutting edge but I now read about all these incompatibility problems on here. I'm presently using Nero 9 which I find brilliant and it does everything I need. I'm scared to upgrade now because of what I've read on here. I don't want to lose anything so should I just ignore this offer - which sounds too good to be true ?

Shahzad - 21:56 06-08-2015

I was searching for Nero platinum 2015 pro version for free from your site i got much information about Nero platinum 2015. But I am glad to tell you that i have download Nero platinum 2015 pro free from SamDownload.

Frank Buehner - 19:47 29-04-2015

I have always liked Nero as the Swiss Army Knife of video and audio conversions and disc burning. This month I upgraded from version 9 for no particular reason and as I tested the new version I found that my DTS audio discs would no longer play. They did in version 9. Their tech support as "talking faces" said the DTS decoder was no longer an option and left me in the dark. So I upgraded to a downgrade with no help, no options and they don't care. Should I ask for my money back and reinstall version 9? What would you do?

Rozkalns - 08:46 13-03-2015

Video editing is Nero weak point,. terrible basically. I can only suggest them to stop develop this feature.

Gary - 19:20 06-01-2015

The video editing capabilities of this product are terrible.Playback:The products included in the suite Recode and Video produce encoded content that does not playback smoothly.

Prior to installing Nero I had installed K-Lite Codec Pack with Media Player Classic, and had been watching my Media flawlessly in multiple formats, so the PC is not to blame.

Editing:Nero insists on Transcoding everything, and there is no option anywhere for Same as Source, forcing you to pick options that often produce unsatisfactory results.Even when all you want to do is edit video, Nero still wants to Transcode even when back to the same format, noticeably reducing the quality in the process.

Changing Formats:Most products will De-Multiplex and Multiplex the video containers, where the Tracks within are compatible with that Video standard, this produces video of identical quality, but not Nero it wants to Transcode everything, noticeably degrading the video quality.

Tools:Nero Video is extremely difficult to use, making even simple tasks frustrating. Take the Cut tool for example probably the most important tool in any Video Editing Suite, I spent 10 minutes trying to select and cut out a section of Mpeg video, and got so frustrated I gave up, even now I don't know if Nero Video was even capable of it. (Cut tool in Recode is allot easier to use).

Other Video tools I have used extensively include Handbrake (GUI), MP4Box (Command line), FFmpeg (Command line), MakeMKV (GUI). Even the Command line ones (whilst not easy to find proper examples of there usage on the Internet), where a joy to use compared to this, because at least they did what I expected of them.